PARIS,
16 June 2002 - Paris'
splendid Musée
d'Orsay, which originated as a train station completed for the
World's Fair in 1900, has made French nineteenth century painting,
architecture, furniture, sculpture, photography and decorative arts
its speciality . Moreover, since its inauguration in 1986, it has also
followed a policy of introducing nineteenth century artists from
elsewhere, people whose work has hitherto been unknown in France,
considering it of the greatest importance to know what was happening
in other countries. .

One of the most successful recent
exhibitions was that of the magnificent Danish artist Hammershoi, but
genuine interest was also shown for the work of the Polish painter,
Jacek Malczewski, for the paintings of Lithuanian Ciurlionis, and for
Whistler, whose work was unfamiliar here before.

Currently,
there is an interesting show dedicated to Thomas Eakins, generally
considered as one of the most important figures of nineteenth century
American art, a man whose achievements paled into obscurity next to
the daring brilliance of the French Impressionist movement.

Born
in Philadelphia in 1844, Eakins, who studied five years at the
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, set off for Paris at the age of 22
in an attempt to break away from an America dominated by landscape
painting. Fascinated by movement he went first to Gérome's
studio at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he became proficient in life
drawing, and then, because portraiture was not taught in the academy,
enrolled in a series of classes given by Léon Bonnat in
Montmartre. He became obsessed with anatomical accuracy and began
using photographs for reference, a feature which was to consistently
dominate his future work. His visit to Europe was completed by six
months in Spain , the influence of which was to emerge forcefully in
his later portraits.

Thomas
Eakins: The Champion Single Scull (Max Schmitt in a Single Scull),
1871Oil on canvas, 32 1/4 x 46 1/4 inches, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York

Returning
home, he began his career with a series of paintings of regattas
beginning with Max Schmitt in a Single Scull, a work which
amazes by its accurate perspective drawing which had no equivalent in
American painting at the time. Taking his inspiration from everyday
life, he painted what he saw, and his themes covered not only rowing ,
but boxing matches, medical scenes, and cowboys . Convinced that only
the camera told the truth, Eakins would take series upon series of
photographs, which he then meticulously used as the basis of his
painting.

"In
his search for realism," a member of the Press service in Paris
said, "he would pin his snapshots to the canvas and trace around
the figures." The Museum of Philadelphia recently discovered four
pin marks in each corner of several of his paintings which he'd
carefully masked with paint . Mending the Net was drawn from an
1881 photograph of Two Fishermen Mending Nets at Gloucester, and
in Shad Fishing at Gloucester on the River, the people watching
the fishermen come straight out of the 1881 photograph, Eakins
Family and Harry at Gloucester.

To
get closer to the musculature of a horse, he would make a model in clay,
and to give greater veracity to his works, he had even attended
dissection classes at medical school. The raw realism of such paintings
as The Agnew Clinic, and The Gross Clinic, where we see
Dr. Gross performing an operation for breast cancer in public,
demonstrates Eakins almost obsessive need to portray only the truth, but
this morbid interest possibly came from his early years when he'd
hesitated between surgery and painting. Objective, direct and detached,
he makes no comment, feels no emotion.

Perhaps this was the
reason why the exhibition seemed to attract few visitors, for apart from
a few Americans, a group of Japanese, and a Dutch family desperately
searching for the exit, the gallery was deserted. It was not really
tempting to linger in front of the sombre, morose portraits, which, as
excellent as they were, were quite heavy going , nor the photographs of
the lumpy naked women, when a glorious feast of the French
impressionists hung nearby, including masterpieces from the Salon of
1868, which as a student, Eakins had dismissed in correspondence to his
sister Fanny as "a mass of trash".

Yet Manet's Déjeuner
sur l'Herbe, resolutely modern, a milestone in 19th century art ,
sensual, disturbing and unsettling, was completed in 1863, over twenty
years before Mr. Eakins was pulling down his pants to crudely
demonstrate a detail of male genitalia (to presumably female students).

The
study of the nude was at the core of Eakins teaching at the Pennsylvania
Academy where the students spent more than sixty hours a week working
with naked models, but the crunch came in 1886 when the artist removed a
male model's loin-cloth during an anatomy course attended by women. He
was dismissed when he refused to put a fig-leaf over his models' private
parts. However, accused of "incest", "bestiality",
and "bad taste", he sank into depression, finally turning to
painting portraits which he reckoned were "good enough to make a
living from". After an absence of one hundred and thirty years,
Thomas Eakins, one of the key artists of the New World, returns to Paris
in this very well chosen selection of his works, including a most
remarkable series of portraits of his wife which, one supposes, he did
not sell!

Thomas Eakins: American Realist
will be on view at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York from 18 June 2002 to 15 September 2002.

Highly
informative essays by scholars provide, not only an overview of Eakins'
work and development as an artist, but also offer a fascinating and at
times entertaining glimpse of the culture and personalities of
nineteenth century Philadelphia and the American art world.

Patricia Boccadoro writes on visual arts
and dance in Europe. She contributes to The Guardian, The Observer and
Dancing Times and is a member of the editorial board of
Culturekiosque.com.